Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

- Damme, Jean-Claude Van

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar-- you pretend it's not there.

Hannah, Daryl

I'd prefer not to be the pretty thing in a film. It's such a bloody responsibility to look cute, because people know when you don't and they're like, They're trying to pass her off as the cute girl and she's looking like a bedraggled sack of potatoes.

Driver, Minnie

Acting on a good idea is better than just having a good idea.

Half, Robert

Some scenes you juggle two balls, some scenes you juggle three balls, some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That's Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that. [On his acting techniques]

D'Onofrio, Vincent

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

I think I am a much better actor than I have allowed myself to be.

Spacey, Kevin

I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting.

Byron, Lord

A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.

Brecht, Bertolt

You don't merely give over your creativity to making a film -- you give over your life! In theatre, by contrast, you live these two rather strange lives simultaneously; you have no option but to confront the mould on last night's washing-up.

Lewis, Daniel Day

10.

Imagination, industry, and intelligence -- the three I s -- are all indispensable to the actress, but of these three the greatest is, without doubt, imagination.

Terry, Ellen

11.

An actor is a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, he ain't listening.

Glass, George

12.

Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation. It is the rarest thing to find a player who has not had his character affected for the worse by the practice of his profession. Nobody can make a habit of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his personality for the sake of exercising a kind of hypnotic power over others, and remain untouched by the process.

Huxley, Aldous

13.

Actors ought to be larger than life. You come across quite enough ordinary, nondescript people in daily life and I don't see why you should be subjected to them on the stage too.

Sinden, Donald

14.

Show me a great actor and I'll show you a lousy husband. Show me a great actress, and you've seen the devil.

Fields, W. C.

15.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

Newman, Paul

16.

Somebody told me I should put a pebble in my mouth to cure my stuttering. Well, I tried it, and during a scene I swallowed the pebble. That was the end of that.

Davies, Marion

17.

I don't think there's a punch-line scheduled, is there?

Python, Monty

18.

She represents the un-vowed aspiration of the male human being, his potential infidelity -- and infidelity of a very special kind, which would lead him to the opposite of his wife, to the woman of wax whom he could model at will, make and unmake in any way he wished, even unto death.

Duras, Marguerite

19.

If a farmer fills his barn with grain, he gets mice. If he leaves it empty, he gets actors.

Vaughan, Bill

20.

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

Wilder, Thornton

21.

I'm disappointed in acting as a craft. I want everything to go back to Orson Welles and fake noses and changing your voice. It's become so much about personality.

Ulrich, Skeet

22.

Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him.

Welles, Orson

23.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

24.

Such is an actor's life. We must ride the waves of every film, barfing occasionally, yet maintain our dignity, even as the bulk of our Herculean efforts are keel-hauled before our very eyes. [On filming MacHale's Navy]

Campbell, Bruce

25.

A true priest is aware of the presence of the altar during every moment that he is conducting a service. It is exactly the same way that a true artist should react to the stage all the time he is in the theater. An actor who is incapable of this feeling will never be a true artist.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

26.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

27.

I never said all actors are cattle, what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.

Hitchcock, Alfred

28.

You know how in high school you do these plays and people come up after the show and they're really excited for you? Well, that's what's happening to me right now.

Sorvino, Mira

29.

I want to do a musical movie. Like Evita, but with good music.

John, Elton

30.

People say I'm cocky, but am I supposed to sit here and be insecure and not know where my future's going or not realize that moviemaking is the greatest thing to happen to me?

Lewis, Juliette

31.

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.

Tracy, Spencer

32.

In civilized life, where the happiness and indeed almost the existence of man, depends on the opinion of his fellow men. He is constantly acting a studied part.

Irving, Washington

33.

I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one weep.

Diderot, Denis

34.

Acting provides the fulfillment of never being fulfilled. You're never as good as you'd like to be. So there's always something to hope for.

Jackson, Glenda

35.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

36.

If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.

Hepburn, Katharine

37.

An agent is a person who is sore because an actor gets 90% of what they make.

Johnson, Alva

38.

If you have to be in a soap opera try not to get the worst role.

George, Boy

39.

The actor's popularity is evanescent; applauded today, forgotten tomorrow.

Forrest, Edwin

40.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

Shaw, George Bernard

41.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

42.

I can't tell you how many shows I've done with full-blown migraine headaches.

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

43.

An actor who knows his business ought to be able to make the London telephone directory sound enthralling.

Sinden, Donald

44.

Every time I get a script it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love. You can't give a reason why.

Olin, Lena

45.

I'm an assistant storyteller. It's like being a waiter or a gas-station attendant, but I'm waiting on six million people a week, if I'm lucky. [On being an actor]

Ford, Harrison

46.

I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment.

Marceau, Marcel

47.

I'm not an actress who can create a character. I play me.

Moore, Mary Tyler

48.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you -- tripping on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as Leif the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

Shakespeare, William

49.

It's not a field, I think, for people who need to have success every day: if you can't live with a nightly sort of disaster, you should get out. I wouldn't describe myself as lacking in confidence, but I would just say that the ghosts you chase you never catch.

Malkovich, John

50.

One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.

Bresson, Robert